TriDot Podcast .065

Optimizing Your Race Execution

Intro:  This is the TriDot podcast.  TriDot uses your training data and genetic profile, combined with predictive analytics and artificial intelligence to optimize your training, giving you better results in less time with fewer injuries.  Our podcast is here to educate, inspire, and entertain.  We’ll talk all things triathlon with expert coaches and special guests.  Join the conversation and let’s improve together.

Andrew Harley:  Big episode of the TriDot podcast today.  Big, big topic to cover with the team. We all know heading into race day we start doing the math on our splits, right?  We start trying to figure out, okay I’ve been running at this pace lately in training, and the course is this distance, and I think I can go at about this pace on race day,... so I hope to finish in X amount of time.  If you’ve raced a tri, you’ve absolutely done this.  Heck if you’ve done any race of any kind you’ve probably done this.  Well at TriDot we have a little something called RaceX (that stands for race execution) and it does this for us way better than we could.  So today we’re going to talk all about it.

First up joining us is TriDot founder and CEO, Jeff Booher.  Jeff is the chief architect behind TriDot’s nSight Optimization Technology that powers TriDot training.  He’s a multiple-time Ironman finisher and has been coaching since 2003 from the Olympic-level to more than a dozen pro triathletes, multiple national champions, and literally hundreds of amazing age-group athletes.  Jeff thanks for joining me today!

Jeff Booher:  Of course Andrew.  Gotta say this is probably the raciest topic that we’ve ever done on the show.  I know everyone is as excited as I am to cover it, but we’ve got a lot to cover.  We’ll just have to pace ourselves and get to it.

Andrew:  Gotta get the pacing right for the racing episode.  Next up joining us is pro triathlete and coach Elizabeth James. Elizabeth came to the sport from a soccer background and quickly rose through the triathlon ranks using TriDot. From a beginner, to top age grouper, to a professional triathlete, she’s a Kona and Boston Marathon qualifier who has coached triathletes with TriDot since 2014.  Elizabeth, I know you just love to get out and race so how excited are you to talk about RaceX?

Elizabeth James:  Wow, yeah!  I don’t know if we can truly quantify my level of excitement about today’s episode. This is just going to be awesome.

Andrew:  Well, I’m Andrew the Average Triathlete, Voice of the People and Captain of the Middle of the Pack.  As always we'll roll through our warm up question, settle in for our race execution conversation, and then wind things down with our cool down.  Lots of good stuff, let's get to it!

Warm up theme:  Time to warm up!  Let’s get moving.

Andrew: Recently TriDot athlete Jack Gaffey hilariously roasted me on Facebook for the way I often say “Triathlon” on the podcast.  Jack posted this.  He said, “Okay, new TriDot ‘drinking’ game.  If you listen to the TriDot podcasts while running or riding on the trainer, go for five minutes at zone 4 every time you hear Andrew say Tri Ath A Lon with the extra syllable...”

We all thought it was a hilarious suggestion.  I promise you it’s something I’m working on, but the more we do these podcasts and the more we start talking it’s just a word I can’t avoid.  We really kind of wanted to take this idea though and really flesh it out further and make an official TriDot podcast drinking game.   And guys let's just say instead of alcohol, you have to take a hit of your favorite electrolyte beverage of choice.  We are triathletes.  We are going to…

Jeff:  Tri-ath-a-letes.

Andrew:  We are tri-ath-a-letes.  Long story short, the warm up question for today is what are some other phrases that you’ve heard on the podcast often enough to incorporate into a TriDot podcast drinking game.  A few examples I’ll give is whenever Dr. BJ Leeper or Dr. Krista Austin are on, they often reference the literature.  So they’re always like, “Well the literature says…”  Because there are nerds, there are brainiacs.  You would want them to do that so somebody could take a shot of their electrolyte beverage of choice every time they hear Dr. Austin reference the literature.  The other one that came to mind for me is all the time I’ll ask the question or Elizabeth will ask a great question and one of our guests will be like, “Oh, that’s such a great question.” and then go on to answer the question.

Elizabeth:  Oh, I’m guilty of that.

Andrew:  Yep, and we’ve all done it.  Everybody’s done it.

Jeff:  That’s what you call “thinking time.”  Getting your thoughts in order.

Andrew:  That’s a great question.  What am I going to say?  Jeff Raines, he takes this a step further.  He always says, “Well, that’s the million dollar question.”  So those have to be on the list of the TriDot podcast drinking game.  But for you guys… I’ve talked a lot here.  Elizabeth, for you what do you think should be on the official TriDot podcast drinking game?

Elizabeth:  Well, this wasn’t necessarily a phrase, but I was thinking every time that Raines throws out a corny joke should absolutely be included.

Andrew:  Yep, and not just Raines.  I mean we just had Jeff Booher sitting here with us…

Elizabeth:  Well, right yeah.  We’ve got Jeff and Jeff making the jokes.

Jeff:  One of the Jeffs.

Andrew:  Yeah, he referred to this episode as the “raciest episode we’ve ever had.”  That would merit a shot in this scenario.  Jeff Booher, how about you?  What is something that you…I know you listen to all the episodes even when you’re not on them.  So what is something that you have heard the rest of us say a lot?

Jeff:  I definitely thought of “that’s a great question.” or “awesome question” something to that effect.  For sure that was the first thing that came to mind, but I thought that would be pretty cheap.  So to do something unique I guess I think optimize.  So any version of the word…optimize, optimized, optimizing. Anything like that.  So when we talk about training we’re very specific with that word and how we use it from a truly technical… You know, you think of training people say “oh it’s dynamic” or adaptive or whatever.  Anything that changes.

Andrew:  Insert buzz word here.

Jeff:  Yeah, you put a buzz word in any automated decision making of any kind qualifies as AI.  There’s just a whole lot that goes into that so it’s something that we use very purposefully with a specific meaning.  So every time we do that, I think we use it quite a bit.  We’re trying to be–

Andrew:  Well, today.

Jeff:  Yes, absolutely.  Optimized race pacing.  Optimize your performance on race day.  For sure. So fill up your electrolyte sports drink.  Get ready to go.

Elizabeth:  Yes, definitely.

Andrew:  Take a big giant swig of your electrolyte beverage when we say optimize today.  But to your point, there’s no other podcast really in the podcast industry where you’re going to hear the word optimize over and over and over and over again. Yeah, that’s a must add.  Hey guys, we’re going to throw this question out on social media because you guys listen as much as we do being on it and so you’re probably even more keenly aware of the things that we say.

Jeff:  This is going to hurt.

Andrew:  This one’s going to get real personal.  So on Facebook we’re going to throw this question out on the I AM TriDot Facebook group.  If you are not a member of that group and you listen to the podcast go join that group. There’s a lot of great activity on it. But we’re going to throw this question out today.  When you hear…what is a recurring phrase, recurring word, what are some of the things that we say a lot that should be a part of the official TriDot podcast drinking game?  Shoutout to Jack Gaffey for starting this madness.

Main set theme:  On to the main set.  Going in 3…2…1…

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Andrew:  Leading into race day there are a lot of important decisions we need to make that will directly impact how it goes out there on course.  There are the equipment choices.  Which wheelset, helmet, tires, and tubes will I use?  There are race execution choices.  How hard will I push on the bike?  What pace should I hold for the run?  Should I change how hard I am pushing for different portions of the course to account for hills or winds.  Making good choices on all of these decisions and more, can have a huge impact on our race. But how can we know we are getting these pre-race decisions correct?  We believe the answer to that is RaceX, and today we are talking through all the nuances of this powerful race execution tool.  So Jeff, even though it has some exciting new updates that we plan to share today, RaceX has been a crowd favorite of TriDot as a feature for a good minute now.  Can you kind of start us off today by giving us the origin story of RaceX?

Jeff:  Yeah, so definitely TriDot users are used to it.  They’re used to seeing RaceX for seven years at least.  It came about…we were doing a Preseason Project and really optimizing– there you go, drink.  Optimizing training and we were doing a Preseason Project where we were tracking the difference of people that used the software, didn’t use the software, how much difference they made, and what alternative.  If they didn’t use TriDot, what they did and how much– the incremental benefit from using TriDot.  We were doing that for a training period, a block of three, four, five months.  Then we wanted to really tie that to the actual race day outcomes.  So that’s where it kind of started.  We need to environment normalize these race day outcomes to see how people race in all these different environments and we can relate that performance back to their training and to their initial assessment.  So that’s where it kind of got its roots.  Just kind of connecting your training in a more purposeful way to where we could normalize it and see the effects of your training on racing.

Andrew:  Yeah and so since then it’s certainly evolved over the years, but this latest update ya’ll; it’s really something.  Athletes are in for a real treat the first time they log on to the new RaceX, or RaceX 2.0 as we call it internally.  Jeff, what was the motivation for really updating RaceX and what are some of the key enhancements in how it helps us execute on race day?

Jeff:  I feel this is more than an enhancement as you’ll see in just a second– spoiler alert is about to come.  Kind of like when we did the Physiogenomix with the genetic.  We’ve been working on this for four years and then we get to launch this out where you can have your genome typed and pulled in.  So much of what we do is the behind the scenes and our users and athletes don’t get to see that much.  It makes a difference, but there’s these subtle changes and they can’t really see the difference it makes.  This one was very visible and tangible so it’s super exciting.

Andrew:  It’s very much like the iceberg.  Athletes see the tip of the iceberg on what TriDot does to optimize… take a drink.

Jeff:  And most of the time they don’t even see the tip.  It’s just behind the scenes.  It’s the optimization itself.  This one’s more…a little bit more pretty and beautiful with what we’re going to launch. Like you mentioned, internally RaceX 1.0 kind of this old way.  And it’s not like a hard cutoff, 1.0 to 2.0.  It’s just evolution over years, but we are taking a big step literally today. In the past it’s always been sufficient to give you guidelines for your training and pacing.  It gives you a really close estimation of what your race day should be, but it was always geared toward the purpose of your training. How do we optimize your training? If you’re doing 112 miles, someone’s doing a 112 mile race for an Ironman and they’re going to do it in 4-½ hours.  Someone else is going to do it in 7 hours.  They trained very differently.  It may vary in how much intensity, how much hills…it depends on your body weight.  So there are so many things that we did for the purpose of optimizing training.  So that’s always been there.  We’ve used it in that way.  But now we’re actually…it’s not just an enhancement.  RaceX has become its own application.  There’s so much that we’re going to be launching, that we have launched, that you’re going to get to see and we’ll go over today.  But it’s literally it’s own application.MyRaceX.com.  So what TriDot is to training, RaceX is to racing.  TriDot optimizes your training.  RaceX is going to optimize your racing.  It’s going to be that stand alone application.  Like we said, it’s fully integrated with TriDot so it’s seamless.  You’re kind of going back and forth.  You’re working day to day on your training.  You’re in one application and when you go to look at your race optimization you click and go over there to RaceX and–

Andrew:  And they’ll work hand in hand.

Jeff:  Absolutely, absolutely.  Fully integrated.  Your bike profiles, all of that stuff.  But then again if someone doesn’t even use TriDot and they just want to use the race optimization, they can go use RaceX by itself.  They can do their own training.  They can…whatever they want to do.  Any kind of training.  Work a free template off the internet and then five weeks out they go, “Holy crap! I need to optimize what I’m doing here and the pacing I go up and down on the hills, and how hard I go on the bike and run.”  They can use RaceX for that.  MyRaceX.com. We’re finding just from this additional– the impact of RaceX to this point has been, or the benefit has been to help people train better.  What we’re doing right now is actually making a difference on race day by these tools and athletes are going to gain 20 to 30 minutes faster than they already are using RaceX to optimize their racing.  Right now TriDot athletes have a head start so that is fully integrated right now. We’re offering this to the masses just in a couple weeks.  Right at the start of 2021 it will be available to anyone; the people that may not use TriDot.  So we’re super excited.  It’s not just the race day either.  There are tools for use on race day for your pacing, but also all of your preparation leading up to race day.  A lot of decisions you make, course selection, race selection, equipment selection, and then your actual execution on race day.

Andrew:  So as triathletes we spend months training to be fit and ready for race day, right? TriDot is all about getting it right in the training knowing that we’re going to be ready on race day.  But once race day arrives, what do we do?  How do we best execute our race?  How hard do we go on the swim, bike, and run?  What about the hills?  What do athletes…without a RaceX, what would an athlete typically do to try to pace themselves on the race?

Elizabeth:  Now this is where I start to get really, really excited about RaceX because it does take care of those questions that I know I have headed into an event and many of the questions that I discuss as I’m talking to athletes about race day preparation.  I kind of want to go and start with the last question in that series there that you asked Andrew.  What do athletes typically do?  Typically athletes ask the question what should my target pace be?  Then they’re trying to determine what should my pace be for the bike or the run?  They’re going to come up with this in a number of ways.  They may say I’ve rode a six hour 112 miles in my last training ride so I’m going to calculate that mile per hour average and use that for my Ironman pacing.  Or many of them will go to a flow chart type resource that they’ve Googled just in order to kind of arrive at what they believe is going to be their target pace for either the bike or the run.  For example, an athlete may look at one of those resources and conclude that for their upcoming 70.3 event they should ride between 80 and 85% of their FTP and that’s very typical for them to look at a percentage and base their entire pacing off of just that one percentage.  I really want to expand on that for just a moment.  If your FTP is 250, I mean, that’s a 12.5 watt difference between 80 to 85% and that can have a huge impact based on where you’re sitting within that range.  I mean, just over half of that, 7 watts over the duration of 2-½ or 3 hours can be very impactful.

Andrew:  Yeah, absolutely.

Elizabeth:  I know I’ve already kind of gone on a while here, but this is just the beginning.  If an athlete has calculated that average metric to follow their pacing and they have those general guidelines, there’s still so many more questions that remain unanswered.  Questions like, well since this is a hilly course how much longer should I expect my bike split to be?  Maybe they were training on a flat section of road, but they’re going to be racing on Ironman Lake Placid or something like Chattanooga.  Then how will the wind speed and the direction affect my split? How hard can I go on the bike without toasting my legs for the run?  If I’m training near sea level and I want to go race at elevation, what impact is that going to have?  There’s just so many little nuances like that for them to sit back and start to question and consider.

Andrew:  I think of this too Elizabeth, just thinking back to my earlier races when I was very novice, very ammature, didn’t know as much as I know now.  I think of the nutrition too.  Like, how long do I need to plan on being on course and thus how many calories do I need to take on the bike with me to stay fueled for that duration? I also think of the run.  How do I pace the early stages of my run so that I have gas in the tank to finish strong without going too easy, but also without leaving too much energy on course?  Those are the questions I always had going into a race as kind of a newbie before I had RaceX.

Elizabeth:  Yeah, I mean exactly.  The answers to all of those questions are so critically important for race execution. It just amazes me that there’s so much attention to every detail in training and yet most athletes are just kind of winging it on race day, or they have this very basic structure of what they plan to do like holding X percent of their threshold on the bike for the duration of the course, or a specific average pace for the run.  But they’re really kind of left with that because there’s so many of these questions that they themselves can’t quantify.

Jeff:  Unfortunately most athletes or so many athletes treat race execution like a big race experiment.

Andrew:  Oh, that’ll preach!  Because race execution shouldn’t be an experiment.

Jeff:  Exactly.

Andrew: We train so hard Jeff.  We measure every training session.  We measure every interval of every day in our training just to get out on the race course and just kind of guess at the pacing.

Jeff:  Exactly. There should be no surprises on race day.  You know what your fitness is.  If you quantify your fitness well and you have proper race execution, the only disappointment on race day is I didn’t execute like I planned to execute. There’s no disappointment in your training.  A lot of people…well one is they treat it like an experiment which is sad.  They don’t really have a concrete plan going in. The other thing is they draw conclusions afterwards.  Oh, I did bad on the bike or the run.

Andrew:  But did you?

Jeff:  I need to change my run training.  Yeah, did you?  Or did you go too hard on the bike?  Or did you not pace your run?  They’re going to, I need to do this differently on my training.  So they treat it like an experiment going out there, but then they come back with invalid conclusions.  It’s not even valid.  I think one key as we begin to approach what race execution is built on, and RaceX can be used for cycling, running, and triathlon and everything. But let’s just focus on bike primarily for a few reasons and realizing we’re speaking to triathletes here for the most part.  But race execution, your execution on race day must be bike-centric.  It has to be centered around the bike.  The bike is the first and the primary consideration for a few reasons.  When I was thinking about how to phrase this I kept thinking about the song it’s “All About That Bass.”  It’s all about the bike you know.  You’ve got to play that one.  Post production you’ve got to…

Andrew:  I didn’t know you knew that song Jeff.

Music playing:  “All About That Bass.”

Jeff:  All about the bike, no treadmill, for a number of reasons.  It’s not about getting your fastest bike split.  It’s not about how fast can I– you get a really fast bike split and then walk the run.  It’s about the right bike split and the reason is because the bike sets you up for everything else.  One, it’s the longest.  It’s about 56% on average of the overall triathlon.  So it’s the biggest piece, so get that right.  Secondly, is that the bike doing it wrong it impacts the run.  Doing the run wrong doesn’t impact the bike.

Andrew:  You’re already done with it.

Jeff:  Yeah, you’re done with that.  Then the other thing is the bike you jack up that, you’re going to mess up your whole run. If you mess up your run pacing you’re going to good for a while and then only at the end do you feel it.  So you mess up your run pacing you might falter on the last 10K, but if you mess up the bike your WHOLE marathon is messed up.

Andrew:  Yeah, that’s a great point.

Jeff:  So that’s another thing.  Then the other thing, what makes it difficult and why you need to pay so much attention is when you do the run you plan to finish on empty.  You’ve kind of got a feeling you’re pushing and you’re done. You know, push as hard as you can, but you don’t do that on the bike.  You can err on the side of to conservative or too aggressive and you don’t really know without a good plan.  So here’s this thing that’s highly critical that impacts the whole race in a massive way and when you finish you’re not exactly sure how tired you should be or how hard you should have gone.  So if you go a little over and you’re not even going to maybe perceive that you went too hard and then you’re going to mess up your whole run or you’re going to go too easy and you leave time out there on the course that you could have gone faster.  It’s just so impactful.  Just starting with that, getting that right, then allows us to…swim’s kind of easy it’s not as much overlapping muscles, it’s much, much shorter, and you don’t have the metrics usually while you’re swimming.  Then the bike– a great run can only follow a great bike.  You know, just focus in on getting that right.

Andrew:  I think to me personally, my highest dot is by far my run dot.  I’m a much stronger runner than I am cyclist and swimmer and if you’re a runner or a swimmer and you hear the phrase “it’s all about the bike” you might initially roll your eyes and say well that’s not the one I’m good at.  I’m going to really count on having a good run or a good swim that day.  Well, the problem is you can’t have a good run if you didn’t do the bike correctly.  I know for me in my first Olympic, 70.3’s when I was starting to go longer, before TriDot, before I had RaceX to guide my pacing, I was never able to run like I should by the time I got on the run course.  I always want to bring it home with a strong run because that’s my favorite part of the race.  My first 70.3 in New Zealand I was crawling through the run.  I was barely able to– not even remotely close to the pace that I wanted to hold.  My most recent race, and really my first race with RaceX was recently Challenge Daytona and I got off the bike, I held to the bike plan, I got off the bike course, and I was able to run not only what RaceX thought I should do, but five ten seconds per mile faster than what RaceX thought I could do.  For the first time I ran the whole half marathon, I had great energy the whole time, and I felt like a runner out there instead of a runner who had just killed himself on the bike trying to survive the run.  It was the most fun I’ve ever had on a race course. If you’re out there and you’re a runner or a swimmer or you’re a cyclist, we all need to recognize exactly what you’re saying.  It’s all about the bike when it comes to pacing race day.

Elizabeth:  But really Andrew, I love how you gave that personal example too because I think this is a very common mistake that triathletes make.  Going too hard on the bike and messing up their opportunity for their best run split.  I remember one of my first years in the sport I heard another coach talk about this and it’s just always stuck with me how he’d see athletes walking the entire run course talking to someone else about how they’ve just had their fastest bike split ever and it’s like, well that’s great, but that doesn’t matter right now because you’re walking the whole run.  You know, to each their own.  If that was their goal for the day and what they were concerned about then maybe they have accomplished that.  But when you’re looking at optimizing your entire race and having your best finishing time, you absolutely have to be cognizant of what impact the bike is going to have on your run performance.

Andrew:  Elizabeth, how much improvement can athletes actually expect to see just by executing their race optimally?

Elizabeth:  Typically the cumulative improvement for an athlete using RaceX to optimize their race execution for a full triathlon is between 20 and 45 minutes.  This is where we can go back and highlight the importance of optimizing the bike split and its impact on your run time.  You want to avoid setting your target power, pace too low. Being overly conservative can cause you just to leave your performance potential unrealized.  Pacing yourself just even 5 watts lower than what you’re capable of can cost you between 5 and 7 minutes on a full triathlon bike split. That’s a chunk of time there just by being too conservative.  But you definitely want to avoid setting your power or pace too high as well.  This is where there’s big opportunity.  Being too aggressive can cause you to blow up toward the end of your race.  Just as we were talking about those athletes that were walking the entire run segment. Pacing too aggressively on the bike leg can cause you to blow up for the majority of your run, not even just those last couple miles, and the time cost there can be 30 minutes to an hour sometimes even more.  So huge opportunity there to really have a faster finishing time by making sure that you’re not too aggressive on the bike.  Even if you set your power correctly, your target power correctly, given the race environment and your ability…how you distribute that effort throughout your race has a significant performance impact as well.  So properly increasing your bike power on climbs, decreasing it on the descents can save you as much as 8 to 12 minutes on a bike split as well.  The time savings are similar for the run as well when using run power or grade adjusted pacing.  You don’t want to set it too low.  You don’t want to set it too high.  You don’t want to just coast at one number the entire time either because the terrain has to be taken into consideration.

Andrew:  Again, we train too hard…we spend too much money on wheels and helmets and stuff that are going to save a minute here and a minute there to lose 15, 20, 25 minutes just to improper pacing.  RaceX helps us optimize our pacing to race faster just like you said.  I totally get that.  So talk to me about this…tangibly what does RaceX do?  How does it actually make us faster on race day?

Jeff:  As we get into that, it does a lot.  Elizabeth was throwing out some different numbers and considerations and changes. It saves different athletes differently based on the course because it’s very specific to the course and the athlete. While one athlete might have a lot of savings on just getting the adjustment from their local environment to heat, how much should you adjust your pacing and getting that right? Another, what percent of your FTP do you ride?  Another, how do you handle the hills and the descents?  What do you run off the bike?  There’s all of these different areas where you can make those changes. It really depends.  When you come off, like we chatted about earlier, you have a bad race… A bad race is not a training issue.  A bad race is a racing issue; an execution issue.  So getting all those expectations right before the start of the race is really key.

Andrew:  I mean, it can be a training issue, but you usually know that going in when that’s the case.

Jeff:  That’s what I’m saying.  You know that going in.  Your expectations should be set appropriately.

Elizabeth:  I just want to jump in here for a second and I want to go back and highlight that again. I know that this is an area that I’m still improving on as an athlete.  When I have a bad race I’m still kind of quick to draw conclusions about my preparation and training.  I think that’s a very, very common thing for athletes to do.  Oh, I had a bad run.  I need to change completely what I’m doing for my run training.  We’re problem solvers.  We’re searching for answers and solutions and we want to make sure that if we had a bad run it doesn’t happen again.  But we’re so quick to jump to those inappropriate conclusions about training based on something that really probably had nothing to do with the training, but the race execution itself.  I know that this is something that Coach John is fantastic about and having those post event discussions about the execution and how that would have had a large impact on the race outcome.

Jeff:  That is another example of an indirect benefit of RaceX and having the race execution. Think about the impact on that race day of your poor racing, but then think about the impact of that false conclusion about how you’re going to approach training for the next block. Three, four, five months you may spend on training in a way that you shouldn’t be spending.

Andrew:  Because the training was fine to begin with.

Jeff:  Exactly. So you’re actually not just jacking up the bike or the run or that race day.  It could be months of training because you’re coming with a false conclusion about how you’re going to adapt your training.

Andrew:  I think of peers that I have, friends that I have, that I’ve seen just jump from training plan to training plan to training plan.  To let me try this coach, let me try that coach, let me try Zwift’s this program and that program and they never land on anything for longer than three or four months to see if it works for them.

Jeff:  I want to step up a little bit.  So we mentioned it’s not just on race day, it’s about all the preparation leading up to that.  It does a number of things.  I want to put it into maybe a couple categories here in a second.  But you’re going to optimize your pacing to get your fastest possible time.  You’re going to be able to use it to get predictions on race splits and races.  We have a bunch of preloaded races, all the major Ironman races and Challenge races.  Those are already in there.  You just click a button.  Enter your information, click a button, and it says here’s your splits and times.  It will help you on race rehearsals.  You can actually export parts of the course and practice on race rehearsals.  There’s a lot of stuff you can do there.  Bike equipment set up analysis; how’s this going to impact me if I use an aero helmet or whatever.  Then you have– actually this is kind of really cool.  The exportable bike power plans.  They’re real time use.  It’s giving you turn-by-turn instructions for a navigation system.  But it’s going to say go to 210 watts, drop to 190 watts, whatever– not say it audibly, but it will guide you through that on the course.

Andrew:  That would be up to Garmin to add that feature, not us.

Jeff:  Correct.

Andrew:  Garmin needs to make our head units talk to us.  That would be great.  To your point Jeff, this is the feature that I am most personally excited about.  The ability to export the bike power plan, so I don’t want to glance over that.  I cannot wait to use this for my races next year.  For me to add Ironman Texas and take that bike course and just upload it to my Garmin unit and then Garmin will tell me along the way while I’m riding, increase your power to this, decrease your power to that, because it knows where I’m at on the course and it knows according to my power plan how many watts I should be holding for that portion of the course.

Jeff:  Based on elevation, based on your heading.  It knows where you’re going to be heading.  Where the wind’s going to be coming from.  What temperature is it that time of day?  What is the air density?  What’s your wind direction?  All of those things.  So it’s super cool.  That power plan is exportable, it’s printable.  You can just print it and put it on your top tube if you don’t have a head unit that does that.  But it’s not just directions.  You can have the most specific directions possible, but what are they based on? That power plan embodies so much technology.  I just want to get a little bit into that of what those things are.  Those technologies that produce– what are those directions and how do you know that they’re right and such?  The term “game changer” is used a lot.  Oh, that’s game changing technology.  I’d say this is race changing.  This is not a game we’re doing, but this is absolutely race changing. So I break it into really two categories.  This is kind of funny, we’re talking about some sophisticated stuff, but I was in the Army.  It’s kind of a side story.  I was in intelligence and we were listening to some traffic in Russia and they were talking about missiles and all this kind of stuff.  The instructor that we were working with on this exercise was trying to get us to answer some questions.  Some pretty basic stuff, and he said “Come on guys!  This is not rocket science!”  Okay, well, so yeah this is rocket science, but anyway.  So we’re going to be talking about rocket science. There’s some sophisticated simulations and optimization and all this stuff going on, but we really want just that fundamental understanding of what’s going on sufficient so you can just apply it.  You can use it, you know how it benefits you, and you can apply it.

Andrew:  So that when you’re on the bike and the Garmin is telling you to do something you know why it’s telling you to do that something.

Jeff:  Yes, exactly.  Like you use your cell phone, but you may not know all the GPS stuff that’s going on.  So RaceX…I’ll break it down into two categories of technology.  One is the simulations themselves.  They’re running simulations just like I mentioned.  Where are you on the course?  What is the elevation change?  How fast are you going?  What is your drag profile?  All of these things.  Those simulations are race specific and they produce race predictions.  So you run a simulation, data goes in, simulates, says here’s what your splits are, yada yada.  Then there’s another level.  This is a higher order of technology.  This is the optimization.  Optimization produces your race plans.  So given we run a whole bunch of simulations to determine what is the optimal scenario for you.  For the time being, just think of the simulations and then optimization.  They have different uses and you can use them for different things throughout the race season.

Andrew:  I like to think of it as a lot of the simulations as an athlete…when you’re using it a lot of the simulations are kind of the pre-race benefit where you’re able to go in there and I can see oh, if I were to add Ironman Chattanooga to my plan for next year or if I were to add my local Olympic race to my plan for next year I can simulate well how would I do on that course if I went out and did that.  So you’re able to kind of simulate and kind of pre-race determine how that race could go for you as opposed to the optimization is okay, I’m doing this race, here’s the plan, I’ve just got to follow it.  Right?

Jeff:  Absolutely. Yep.  So that simulation and then of course you can run your optimal plan across a simulation and it’s going to give you your actual optimized output; your best one.  But you can change those to whatever you want.  Again, I already mentioned it’s going to look at your course, your terrain, the elevation, air density, wind direction, wind exposure, and then the athlete; your weight, your bike weight, your drag profile, what position are you when you climb and not in your standard racing, your target power.  All that kind of stuff is going to go into the mix when it does those simulations.

Andrew:  So RaceX actually has the ability to simulate any race for an athlete whether it’s your favorite local race or name brand Ironman, Challenge course.  Elizabeth, talk to us about what race simulations can do to make us faster on race day.

Elizabeth:  Well, yeah.  Just kind of as you guys were talking it can be used to simulate any race.  I know that we’ve already discussed that the major races such as those from Ironman and Challenge family are kind of preloaded into RaceX with the verified courses, but an athlete can add their custom races and routes as well.  As Jeff had just outlined these simulations are able to be used to make predictions.  If my goal is to go sub whatever, what course is going to be best for that.  Gosh, and this is fun.  As a kid I think I’d pester my parents all the time with the what if questions. It’s like here you get to play what if. You know, like what if I race Lake Placid, what would my total finishing time be?  What if I raced Ironman Florida, could I expect to PR my bike split? It’s great because we have these sim only events and then you have the scheduled event.  So you can run a number of scenarios on the races that you’re considering, you know just for fun.

Jeff:  Yeah, and that’s like for TriDot athletes or any…if you’re actually racing a race say hey this is a scheduled race, I’m doing this one.  So put it on my calendar.  But even if you’re not sure if you want to do the race, you just want to throw and run simulations.  So we have kind of a mode of adding a race that’s sim only.  So say I just want to run simulations on it and see what’s going to happen.

Andrew:  I just want to see.  I just want to play in the sandbox.

Elizabeth:  We just want to play what if.  Yeah exactly. If you want to schedule the event then TriDot athletes can place that on the season planner and then that event is going to be taken into consideration for their training.  So you can run as many simulations as you want without it influencing the training plan and then when you’ve found the event you want to register for and it’s time to schedule it, have it incorporated into those training algorithms then you can put that as a scheduled race and kind of use a lot of those enhanced features within RaceX as part of your training preparations. So Andrew, I guess to kind of recap a little bit, using a simulation can help an athlete make decisions about what course they want to race, what equipment they want to purchase.  There’s a lot of opportunities there.

Andrew:  Yeah, Elizabeth just mentioning equipment because I know some folks…I mean there’s certainly things when you’re heading into that big A race you can purchase some speed, you can buy speed, or you can rent speed.  So what are some of those equipment items that athletes might be considering before a big race that RaceX can simulate the effects of?

Elizabeth:  A few examples would be deciding between wearing an aero helmet or a road helmet. Purchasing or as you mentioned renting deeper dish or some aero wheels for race day.  But even considering a bike purchase, comparing a tri bike to a road bike.  I guess for example, just the other day I ran a simulation on Ironman Chattanooga just kind of between wearing a road helmet and an aero helmet.  The aero helmet shaved 2 minutes and 50 seconds off the bike split.  So it’s really cool that athletes can run these simulations and quantify how much a gear upgrade could impact their finishing time.

Andrew: It’s funny hearing that number.  You know, 2 minutes and 50 seconds.  I want to point out that number is going to be different for everybody. I’m going to be on the bike course longer than you because you’re a faster cyclist than I am.  You’re going to be going at faster speeds so you’re going to have the aero gains from the aero equipment is going to be more realized for you and so I could probably do the same exact simulation and it’s going to give me a slightly different number because it knows how long I’m going to be on course and the speed that I’m going to be going.  So it’s not just giving every athlete an arbitrary number. It’s giving everybody how much time they should be saving based on that equipment decision.  So one, I want to point that out because that is super dope.

Jeff:  One cool scenario that I like to mention.  It’s funny that you mention that.  A helmet is pretty straight up.  It’s not a weight thing typically, it’s just the aero dynamics.  But if you think of disc wheels, for example.  So you’re doing the bike, disc wheels, on a flat course they’re much more aero dynamic.  They’re heavier so it doesn’t cost you much on a flat course.  But if you do on a course with a lot of elevation change.

Andrew:  Lake Placid.

Jeff:  Lake Placid, you’re carrying that up and down so it has some negative effect being a heavier wheel.  So there’s some pros and cons there. The same way, not even equipment, but racing at altitude.  So say, hey one because it’s at altitude so there’s not as much oxygen in the air, but there’s not as much density in the air so you don’t have the drag.  So your drag is less.  So a lot of people depending on how fast they are race faster on the bike at altitude than they do at sea level, but it depends on how fast you go.  If you don’t go fast enough for aero dynamic drag to be that much of a factor, you’re going to go slower by both accounts.  The pros of less air density is not going to help you as much as the negative effect of less oxygen.

Andrew:  Whichever camp you’re in your going to see that on RaceX.  This is a question though I know that athletes listening…this is just a key question that people wonder.  I see people ask this about RaceX 1.0 because they kind of wonder.  How accurate…when you see your projected splits, when you see your projected finish times.  How accurate are those splits and projected finish times in RaceX simulations?

Elizabeth:  Okay. I’m sure Jeff has a lot that he could add here too, but this is something that I love talking about because I have found this to be just fascinating.  A RaceX simulation is unique as every athlete using it.  So very individualized which makes it incredibly accurate.  The results are predictable.  To give you a reference, and this is why I got so excited when you asked this question. My projected finishing time for Waco 70.3 last year was 4:51:11.  My actual finishing time was 4:49.49.  So super close there.

Andrew:  A minute and 22 seconds away if my math is correct.

Elizabeth:  Well and just wait.  I want to tell you kind of these splits too for the swim, bike, and run.  So my RaceX projection considered not only my recent training, the fact that my swim training was nearly non-existent for the prior two months before the race while I was in a cast, but the environmental conditions in Waco as well.  You know, the rolling hills of the bike course and the challenging run segments in Cameron Park.  Let’s take a look for a second at just the swim, bike, run.  I’m already a little bit of a slower swimmer and kind of swimming with a hand that was just still healing.  My projected swim time was 35:22.  I came out of the water at 35:18.

Andrew:  You beat it. Congrats!

Elizabeth:  I beat it, four seconds faster than the projected time.  I mean four seconds.  You can’t get a whole lot closer than that.  Then my projected bike split was 2:36:12.  My actual bike split was 2:36:43.  Again, so close; 31 second delta between the projected and the actual time over 56 miles.  Then my projected run time was 1:31:51. I ran a 1:30:24 that day so a little faster on the run and what I did there is I followed the RaceX pacing until the final few miles and then it was just time to empty the tank so I was able to be a little faster in the last couple miles there.

Andrew:  And to that point, I have a GoPro shot of Elizabeth James.  I was about maybe a half mile from the finish line and I got you going by me on my GoPro camera and you were hauling by then.  Just booking it.

Elizabeth:  Yeah, like I said it was time to empty the tank at that point.  But, you know, this is just one example and I know for Ironman Texas, Ironman Chattanooga, Ironman Wisconsin, all of my times were very, very close to that projected finishing time and those are for the IRONMAN races I’ve done.  I mean, the marathon I ran this fall, my projected time and my finishing time were just six seconds different.  So when we’re talking about accuracy; yeah, incredibly accurate.

Jeff:  Those times– obviously it’s not going to come out that accurate always.  That is pretty crazy and I’ll explain why in just a second. But certainly the more you race and the more you get used to executing in a disciplined manner and regulating your effort level you’re going to get better and better at hitting those paces predictably which then you can make some training decisions.  Like, okay I did execute to what I thought and you can make some conclusions.  Because you’re going in with a plan.  You have an expectation that you can measure against.  That standard.  I’m going to make a statement that’s kind of contrary to what I just said, you know it’s not always that exact.  Actually the simulations are 100% accurate all of the time; RaceX simulations are 100% accurate all the time.  So where I qualify that is the simulations are just math.  That’s putting in these known inputs and getting an output.  So as long as you put in those exact inputs, you’re going to get those same out.  It’s like a calculator.  When you add three numbers 2, 3, and 4.  You add those together you’re going to get 9 every single time.

Andrew:  Every single time.

Jeff:  But if another day you say, okay I added three numbers and I got 8.  It was whatever, 3, 3, and 2.  Well, you added different numbers.  So the calculator and the simulator are the same thing.  If you put in the same numbers you’re going to get the same output every single time.  So simulations are 100% accurate.  So where they get off a little bit is because we try to estimate what those future conditions are going to be.  So on race day if it’s 5 degrees warmer or a little windier or not quite as windy.  Or you instead of down in your aero position for as much as you thought maybe you’re sitting up a lot.  Your back was sore.  Maybe you… There’s all kinds of little things like that that absolutely do not go into the simulation.  You can’t foresee those.  So that’s not the purpose of the simulation.  So there is variance like that and that’s to be expected, but it’s going to be really super, super close.  So there will be those variances.  Realize that going in.  So you don’t want to get– and it depends a lot of this on personality.  You don’t want to get all wrapped up into precision.

Andrew:  I have to hit this no matter what.

Jeff:  You drive down the road and say I’m going to always go the speed limit or I’m 10 over.  You don’t hit that exact miles per hour the whole time.  You’re fluctuating kind of around it.  So there is some variance and use it that way.

Andrew:  Cruise control, Jeff.  Cruise control.

Jeff:  That’s right. It’s an example; an analogy. Cruise control, I wish we had…

Andrew:  There’s no ERG mode on the race course.

Jeff:  Yeah, that’d be cool.  Just say go, ERG mode, and just push until it's done.  So we’re anticipating certain things.  There is going to be variances.  There’s no such thing as a perfect race.  I love the…along that line this is kind of the mentality on race execution that you can just count on three things going wrong.  Or four things going wrong.  They’re going to go wrong.  That’s part of the race.  So when it happens accept it.  It went wrong, I’ve got two more; I’ve got one more.  That’s just part of it.  So you’re going to have those deviations.  I like a couple quotes.  One, back to the military is “Stay in your three foot world.”  I don’t know if you’ve heard that before.  Basically it’s all this stuff can be going on all around you, but stay in this three foot world and that’s kind of the convergence of things that you can control and things that matter.  So who cares what happens.  If it’s very important, but happens an hour from now you can’t control that right now.

Andrew:  That’s a problem for future Andrew.

Jeff:  Yeah, and what matters.  So be aware of things, but focus on what you can control and what matters.  Then the other quote is having a plan.  Mike Tyson, for those of you that are old enough to remember him, he had a quote.  Everyone was saying this guy is talking about his plan.  He’s going to do this, he’s going to dance, he’s going to move, and he’s going to whatever he said.  And Mike Tyson goes, “Yeah everybody’s got a plan until they get hit in the mouth.” So we’re doing Ironman.  You’re going to get hit in the mouth sometime out there.  Something’s going to happen and you’re going to go okay and you’re going to have to adjust a little bit.  But use a plan for what it’s worth.  It will definitely help you out.

Andrew:  I’ve even heard you guys talk about this how again, barring something going wrong out there; barring something costing you some time for some reason. Mathematically the bike split should be spot on.  It’s earlier in the race.  We can quantify this is how aero you are, this is the equipment you are on, this is the course, this is the weather, and this is the power you hold.  So if you hold the power you should hold the bike split mathematically should be spot on.  The run on RaceX 2.0, the run actually gives us a range due to the amount of things that can vary by the time that we’re that deep into the race, right?

Jeff:  There’ll be a specific target number.  Also there’s this expectation range of likelihood that you’re going to do exactly that.  But think about the purpose of a simulation.  The simulation is to produce predictions that are then used to produce your plan.  So the purpose of a simulation is not like a crystal ball to…you know, it’s not like picking squares for Super Bowl like what is the outcome of the game score going to be.  You know, you’re guessing and trying to hit the lottery or something.  It’s not that.  It’s not predicting like a crystal ball.  But it’s to produce as best we can predictions where we can make decisions on pacing.  So regardless of the degree of variance on race day and if you’re a few minutes under or over any prediction, by executing that optimized plan you’re going to do better than you would have done otherwise.  If your optimized plan is going to have you run 12 minutes faster over the whole race and it’s warmer on that day, well just move the whole target and your actual result to the warmer side.  That relative benefit is still going to be there because everything still holds true.

Andrew:  Jeff, what goes into that optimized power plan?

Jeff:  Yeah, this is key.  This is where a lot of the benefit is on race day is that power plan.  The last thing you want to do is train for months and months and months and go out there and just kind of guess and let that poor execution rob you of your potential.  This point in developing that plan is where the optimization piece– kind of back to the simulation and optimization.  Optimization the first thing that it’s going to do is it’s normalizing your FTP.  So your current level of fitness, your functional threshold power or pace.  It translates that from what is it in your local training environment to your race environment whether it’s going to be a lot hotter, more humid, higher elevation, whatever that is it’s going to make that translation.  So it’s going to take your fitness, that benchmark threshold level and change it to that local condition.  That’s going to benefit you on race day for sure, but it’s also in your race rehearsals.  You’re going to be able to do race rehearsals using your localized in your training environment intensities and then go do a different set of power values….

Andrew:  So you get to practice that.

Jeff:  Yeah, exactly.  Right and you’re running off the bike with the same feeling.  You’re going to actually get to see what that feels like, track your heart rate, all kinds of stuff that you want to do in those race rehearsals.  But then on race day you’re showing up to that environment with your benchmark threshold adjusted.  Then it’s going to do that target power or pace identification so it’s no more guessing 80-85% or is this shorter race I’m doing 89% or whatever.  You’re not guessing the percent of threshold for your target pace or target power.  You’re dialing that number in and that’s taking into consideration a lot of things; the duration of your races, this is 112 miles or 56 miles, or whatever it is. Is it going to be a two hour or a four hour 56 miles?  Then all the terrain, how hard you’re going, hills, all that taken into account.  So that’s getting step two, your target power pace identification.  That’s kind of around your fitness.  This next part is really optimization around the course itself.  There’s route segmentation and the route itself; the hills, the terrain, the left turns, right turns, all the different things that are going on we have algorithms that run route segmentation optimization to where they’re identifying the flats, the climbs, the descents, and grouping those together in meaningful segments that make the most sense.  Like where are the descents?

Andrew:  Where should you change how much power you’re holding?

Jeff:  Is this one big climb from top to bottom or is it three different climbs as it changes based on the duration and how hard you’re going to have to go on each of those relative to your FTP?  You know the descents.  What is your drag profile?  When do you start maxing out?  Like I’m going as fast as I can because the wind is holding me back I’m going so fast. Anyway.  So it's segmenting just the course.  So we’ve optimized the course and that’s all prerequisite to then optimize your power.  Now we have your target power, the course segmented and optimized…

Andrew:  Which again, quick reminder, it’s going to do that from every major Ironman race that’s already in there, or if you want to upload the GPX file of your favorite local sprint it can do it for that too.

Jeff:  That’s exactly right.  Then there’s settings in there.  You can do your climb variance, flat variance, flat max, your descent max…all these different settings.  How much variability do you want to be counted together or when do you want those breaks to be.  If your head unit can only take 100 segments, 50 segments…like I don’t want to be changing power every quarter mile.  So you’re going to set what you want that to be.

Andrew:  How many times you want to be prompted to change your power.

Jeff:  Correct. Right.  How often and all that.  So that’s all route segmentation.  Then you have the power plan optimization itself.  Optimized– drink.  When do you change power?  Why do you change power?  What’s the impact of that considering all of those different things?  So you’re going to have that very, very detailed.  Again, able to export it, print, upload it to your head unit, whatever you want to do there.  Then there’s this other feature that we use.  It’s not a feature so much as it’s an embedded technology.  It’s called bike impact on run time, BIRT. That’s a quantification of if say RaceX says we want you to go 73% of your FTP for this bike split, but you say I want to go 75% and you can adjust that; it’s going to give you an estimated impact on your run time.  So yeah, you may go faster by three minutes, but it’s going to cost you 7-½ minutes on your run or whatever that might be.

Andrew:  So that would be a big BIRT.

Jeff:  It would be a big BIRT.  You don’t want a big BIRT.  You want a little BIRT.  We’ve all grown up loving big BIRT, but big BIRT is bad.

Andrew:  The day Sesame Street came on the TriDot podcast.

Jeff:  All of that kind of happens and then you get your optimized bike, power plan.  Then your run is optimized, your target pace or power whether you’re running by grade adjusted pace or your run power, either one there.  Then you can make whatever optimizations…not optimizations.  You’d be making modifications on your own; whatever. It’s just to put the athlete in control. You can change it to whatever you want it to be, but we’re going to optimize.  So the easiest, simple use is you put in your race, RaceX optimizes it, you export it or print it out and go execute that.  It’s that simple.  You look at it, you can dig into it, you can modify it, you can change it, you can run what ifs like Elizabeth loves to do.  Just see what would happen with equipment, with going harder here, less here, and just do that to your heart’s content.  So that’s kind of the guts of the optimization piece.

Andrew:  How it makes you faster on race day.

Jeff:  And how it makes you faster.  By answering all of those questions systematically through the technology to get you exactly what is the fastest possible time for you to get from point A to point B.

Andrew:  So Jeff, before RaceX launched to the masses there was a webinar for TriDot ambassadors to kind of give them the first look at the new RaceX and it helped us get some feedback and advice from our athletes.  On that call a great question came up about how RaceX compares to any other resource that suggests race day pacing.  An athlete mentioned a specific app that is exclusively bike pacing focused.  Now on that call we didn’t have time to address it, but Jeff can you kind of compare and contrast RaceX with that app?

Jeff:  Absolutely. First of all I want to shout out to our ambassadors.  They are so awesome.  Really appreciate their time.

Andrew:  They’re okay. They do okay.

Jeff:  This and past releases, past things we’ve done before just getting the input from them and advice and hey think about that.  We’ve even got a comment on there, “That sucks!”  And we were like that’s the most valuable thing and then here’s my idea.  So it’s not just beating us down, but then they had a much better idea.  Like, hey yeah that’s a much better way to explain this or whatever.  So much appreciated there.  There’s a whole lot of other apps.  I’ll mention, or not apps so much as just even your Garmin says here’s your recommended 10K pace.  It’s these recommended, they’re on very simple, one size fits all power duration curves.  That’s not at all what we’re talking about here.

Andrew:  My Garmin ones are always much slower than I’m capable of and I’m like, “get out of here Garmin!”

Jeff:  It’s going to depend on a lot of things like genetics, your training; I mean there’s so many things.  So this is much beyond that.  This is applying weather, terrain and a whole bunch of other things.  The one thing that the guy mentioned that that bike application…that is a good reference point for some triathletes who have used that even if you don’t–  As I walk through this with some differences it will help kind of enumerate some of the different things that we’re doing now. Where the similarities are to that bike only app is that it does simulations.  So it is simulated.  There are inputs.  It’s running the math; the uphills, downhills, wind drag.  You enter your own so it doesn’t come up with your target power. You enter here’s the power I’m going to do.  So it takes that in and produces the simulation.  So that’s where we’re similar in the simulation side itself. It doesn’t do the run, doesn’t do the swim.  So the optimization piece…pre-simulation, pre-optimization is verifying the routes. These are the things we uniquely do. We verify those routes, the elevation. We have our own validated elevation source outside of Google elevation or some of these others.  So it’s highly accurate.  The wind exposure and direction are set for those.  We have those preloaded courses for all the major events like I mentioned .The optimization of the power segments. What should constitute a hill or a climb or a descent for you?  How long should those be?  What is that optimal breaking up of those zones?  Optimizing the environment.  So translating here’s what my FTP is in my local training environment, what should it be on race day?  The identification of what is your percent of FTP for your target power?  What should that number be?  That optimization.  The optimization of power for each segment.  So based on all those segments that are optimized what that power should be. Then optimizing, or minimizing your bike impact on your run time.

Andrew:  So we can kind of give you a big BIRT or a small BIRT.  They don’t give you any BIRT.

Jeff:  That’s just not an analysis. They don’t do the run specifically, but they don’t do the optimization either.  So we have that power plan based on all of that.  One way, in that specific app if you’re a user, a way to just kind of highlight the difference is if you were to have RaceX and you organize your, you have X number of power segments for a particular bike and you get your predicted time, your optimized time and then you go change those number of sections you’re going to go look at the power numbers change and your predicted optimized time will change.  If you have fewer segments it’s not going to be as fast if you had more segments. It’s just more granular.  If you go to that app and you change the number of segments your time doesn’t change.  It’s the same.  You have different power, different intervals, different watts, but it’s not optimizing.  It’s just running a simulation and doing these kind of after the fact adjustments. So that’s just the level that we’ve taken it to.  Obviously we’ve been working on this for many, many, many years and adding that layer on top of simulations to optimize both segments and environments going into simulations and then also after you run those simulations running them in a way that we can optimize the output so that you have that precise, best power that leads to the best overall race when you race.

Andrew:  Race time. Yeah.  So we’ve talked quite a bit about race execution and what RaceX does for us.  So let’s talk just a little bit about what we need to do as athletes to use RaceX. What is the process like for an athlete that is signing up from onboarding to using the pacing plan on race day?  What are kind of all those steps in between?

Elizabeth:  One of the things that Jeff had mentioned earlier is that using RaceX can be super simple and I kind of want to go back and just highlight that again.  I mean, athletes…

Jeff:  It doesn’t have to be rocket science.

Elizabeth:  Right, exactly.  It doesn’t. You provide your data, select your race, and then you received your optimized pacing plan.  I mean, three simple steps right there.  Then you can be done.  The optimization is fully automated.  So it’s done for you.  Then from there it really just depends on how much you want to dig in.  If you want to get into some of the rocket science there are those settings that an athlete could choose to modify, but that’s athlete choice.  They don’t have to.  They can be very, very simple.  Very easy.

Andrew:  What are some of those settings that an athlete can modify if they want to dig in a little deeper?

Jeff:  I mentioned a few of those earlier.  So there’s a bike profile.  You can adjust the weight of your bike.  Your body weight is going to affect it too.  So you can actually put in there here’s my typical race weight.  So I may be this much now, but typically on race day I weigh this much.  So you can put that in there.

Andrew:  Right now Jeff, I weigh a mean 140.  On race day I like to be down to 138.  So big difference.

Jeff:  That’s right.  Lean and mean.  Yeah, so your weight.  Your components.  You can have kind of two different bike setups; one with race wheels and one without the race wheels.  Change your…when you’re in there and your percent FTP, if you wanted the number of segments, the climbing speed.  There’s a couple of cool things.  Like at what point how fast when you’re going up a hill or how slow, I guess, do you move up to your hoods?

Andrew:  The base bars, yeah.

Jeff: So when I’m climbing I’m not down in my aero.  I’m moving up.  So what speed is that?

Andrew:  Or when you’re descending…

Jeff:  On the flip side, the terror factor.  Yeah, what is your descent…

Elizabeth:  How fast are you willing to go?

Andrew:  When do I stop pedaling?  I found out in Greece for me that’s 38 miles an hour.  At 36 to 38 miles an hour Andrew Harley stops pedaling.

Jeff:  So you’re braking at that point.  So you get to set that.  Each athlete will be different, so that will affect.  So you can change all of those things and you don’t have to change anything.

Andrew:  Elizabeth, as a highly competitive athlete and as a coach for your athletes how do you plan on utilizing all these new features in RaceX to get ready and prepare for race day?

Elizabeth:  Gosh!  There are so many opportunities here.  As we’ve discussed so far, the applications of using RaceX extend well beyond the race event itself.  For example, RaceX is going to allow for race rehearsals to be even more productive and truly not just four weeks and two weeks out from race day, but also in the months leading up to race day for better familiarity with the bike course terrain as athletes have the opportunity to ride a portion of the race course at their specified wattages to kind of match the training objectives at that particular session.  So a lot of–

Jeff:  Can I just interrupt real quick.  She’s talking about right there there’s some of these environments where you can actually go and look and you’re in the environment where you’re riding the course. This allows you to actually push the power that you’re going to push during the course as well.

Andrew:  Yeah, the right power.

Jeff:  So it’s even more than just that environment.

Elizabeth:  And as you’re doing that then kind of also tracking your heart rate in relationship to the terrain of the course. Dialing in your perceived exertion. How does it feel to ride that specific hill or this specific segment of the course?  So that’s going to give you a lot of information as well even prior to race day.  I know that I’m personally planning to use that feature in the months prior to my race events and I’m going to be working with my coached athletes to do the same. I also think that it’s something that I’ll use to help guide athletes toward appropriate gear selections.  I know we had talked about that.  I know we’ve recently had a great podcast episode on gear upgrades as well and some of those items that can make an impact on race day.  So instead of just telling an athlete like, hey we really need to get you on a TT bike instead of your road bike.  Being able to kind of educate them and quantify what difference that gear upgrade would make for them in their finishing time, I think that’s going to be a very valuable thing as well.  Gosh, in addition to that there’s a section within RaceX where you can outline your nutrition and hydration that you’ve been practicing within those longer duration sessions.  So I know that I’m going to use that as a resource to outline my nutritional intake for preparation for race day ensuring that I’m feeling strong, not experiencing any GI distress so that I’ll be able to replicate that same plan on the race course as well.  Then all of the race day benefits we’ve previously mentioned.  I know Andrew you’ve said you were most excited for that exporting the bike power plan.  That’s the same thing here.  That’s what I’m most excited about.  I know I’ve already kind of listed a bunch of things there and this wasn’t an exhaustive list by any means just because there’s so much functionality, but I think there’s one last thing that I want to mention as well.  For me I think one of the biggest benefits that isn’t necessarily a specific feature or a specific number, it’s just an increased sense of confidence.  I know RaceX has always given me a lot of confidence going into a race.  I know what to expect for my pacing of each discipline.  I know how that’s going to fit together for my final finishing time, and I know that that’s going to be a big benefit to athletes using this as well.

Andrew:  Jeff you mentioned earlier for TriDot athletes that use TriDot to train .  This is already available as of today..

Jeff:  Yes.  They get a head start.

Andrew:  Yeah, they get a head start.  So when is this available to the masses?

Jeff:  Early January.  Early January.  I’ll leave it at that.  We have a date in mind, but we’re just continuing to get some things in line for that.  But really excited to welcome others that may be doing other things to train.  Love to optimize your training too, but if you want to use RaceX alone, that’s wonderful. It can definitely make a big difference this next year.  I know just in the context with this past year, so many races have cancelled and so many things have happened, it’s just kind of a fresh start.  Just a way to get excited about, visualize what you can do, set some new PR’s even at the same fitness level.  Just knowing the pacing better is going to take 20, 30, 40 minutes off your time.  It’s just a big inspiration, a hope, and helps a lot of people come back to the sport, come back to their training, come back to racing stronger than ever.

Cool down theme:  Great set everyone!  Let’s cool down.

Jonathan Mejia:  Hi TriDot family.  My name is Jonathan Mejia from Tampa, Florida and I want to share a quick story of how RaceX helped me get through Challenge Daytona 2020.  So I’m a fairly new triathlete.  I’ve been doing triathlons for just over a year now and using TriDot for just shy of 10 months during that time.  I primarily completed local sprints and I did sign up for a few Olympics and International distance.  Unfortunately COVID cancelled most of those races, but I knew that I wanted to do something a little bit more challenging than a sprint.  So a buddy of mine in the military actually had just signed up for Challenge Daytona and he said, “Hey I think you should do this, the middle distance specifically.” and I thought he was crazy because I hadn’t done anything greater than a sprint at that time.  So I put the race in the season planner and of course it says, “Hey you can do this.” and now I’m like well, if TriDot says I can do it then I can do it. So I signed up for the race. Overall over that six months of training went fairly well, I mean considering work, family, and being in the Army National Guard.  It wasn’t as consistent as I would like, but I did the best that I could and ultimately I did feel strong and confident going into Challenge Daytona.  Obviously being in the military, we love a good plan and that’s ultimately what RaceX gave me.  I remember the night before reviewing my race splits and it was showing that I was going to finish sub six hours which I thought was crazy because I hadn’t done a 70.3 before.  But ultimately it predicted for my swim that I was going to do it in 44:58, I was going to do the bike in 2:38:35, and finish the run in 1:52:25.  I thought it was a little bit aggressive, but I was like, “you know, if I get anywhere near that on the swim coming out of the water I’ll feel okay on the rest.”  And ultimately I did.  I came out of the swim at 42:32; 2-½ minutes under what RaceX predicted and I felt great. Unfortunately when I got on the bike I had an issue with the saddle so I had to jump off for five minutes and fix that while I was on the course and also my legs started cramping.  I don’t mean a little cramp here and there, I mean nonstop cramps on both of my quads.  So my bike time was 2:52:39, about 14 minutes more than what was predicted. Now ultimately my goal was to finish under six hours and I knew that if I averaged–  if I had at least two hours on my run or less that I would be okay. So I step off the bike, go through transition, and my legs just will not stop cramping.  I mean both of my quads and the rest of my body just want me to stop and to quit.  I knew if I walked that I would quit.  So I decided to back off the RaceX pace just a little bit, but I had known enough about RaceX and the paces that it put in there for me and the training that I had done that I knew if I can back down and average, finish the 13.1 miles at 2 hours I’ll be okay.  That’s ultimately what I did.  I finished at 2:01:38 to get an overall time of 5:48 beating my goal and coming in under six hours despite the cramps and everything that I faced.  Ultimately the best part of crossing that finish line was not only just saying hey I finished a 70.3, but it was also seeing Andrew the Average Triathlete there and Coach John Mayfield cheering me on as I was crossing the finish line.  That kind of was the icing on the cake to say, hey this was a great race.  So I was really excited about that 70.3 and excited about my next which will be Ironman 70.3 Puerto Rico in March and I’m excited to use RaceX for that race and see what it predicts for me as I continue with my training and trust the process.

Andrew:  Well, that’s it for today folks.  Enjoying the podcast?  Have any topics or questions you want to hear us talk about?  Head to TriDot.com/podcast to let us know what you’re thinking.  We’ll do it all again soon.  Until then, happy training!

Outro:  Thanks for joining us.  Make sure to subscribe and share the TriDot podcast with your triathlon crew.  For more great tri content and community, connect with us on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.  Ready to optimize your training?  Head to TriDot.com and start your free trial today!  TriDot – the obvious and automatic choice for triathlon training.